File-Sharing Predicts Failure of Whitney Houston

File-Sharing Predicts Failure of Whitney Houston

March 01, 2003

Whitney Houston failure leads to ouster of Arista executive. If the music executives would just look at the data from the file-sharing networks, they'd be able to predict with much better accuracy which records will sell.

The story is here:
(http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,79897,00.html#2)

The formula is easy... more files shared equals more records sold -- and and fewer files shared equals fewer records sold.

Of course, this data hurts the argument that file-sharing is bad for music sales.

- by Aimee Deep at 11:31 AM with 55 comments

Comments

Dear Aimee, How is it possible to find out how many times a particular artist or song was downloaded on file sharing sites? Posted by: Rick Johnston, on March 3, 2003 05:11 PM

Well, Rick, search for a file. How many results do you get? That'll show you how many people are sharing the file. Hick, dur. God! SNL sucks. A rerun is on Comedy Central right now. Jesus, what crap. Posted by: bug, on March 27, 2003 09:38 PM

It would seem to be another good use for filesharing, but also you would have to look at the demographics of those using filesharing vs. those who would be your target audience for an album. Posted by: Linth, on June 2, 2003 07:13 AM

Another way to get a very clear idea of how many times an album (note album note song in this case) is listened to on a device connected to the internet is to go to gracenote.com. They are what was CDDB and they are used by iTunes, winAmp and others to let you know the album name and song names you are listening to. (That info is not contained ont he CD itself) They keep track of all requests. Radiohead has been in thier top 50 for weeks already. Clearly it will be a big seller. Posted by: B. Mindful, http://www.fleetingiamge.org on June 2, 2003 03:12 PM